Tag Archives: Laemmle Theatres

The Wall Street Journal examines the plight of small-town single-screen cinemas that are unable to make the costly transition to digital in the article ‘Is Film the End of the Road for Small Cinemas?‘. It highlights one particular cinema near Scranton, Pennsylvania, facing imminent death-by-digital.

Hollywood’s major studios are in the final days of distributing movies on film reels and moving to digital distribution sent via hard drives or satellite, a method that is cheaper for studios but requires significant investment by theaters in new equipment. The conversion means theaters like Mrs. DiAugustine-Bower’s Berwick Theater could fade out for good.

The theater, about 50 miles southwest of Scranton, has raised only $6,000 so far, a difficult amount to earn by selling baked goods and old movie posters in an economically depressed town.

“I got a backlash from patrons when I mentioned raising ticket prices” to $5 from $4, said Mrs. DiAugustine-Bower.

But help has come for some from an unexpected quarter: Indian digital cinema integrator Scrabble.

About 87% of the 5,762 theaters in the U.S. are now digital, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners. The remaining 13% is mostly made up of one-screen independents, in rural communities with no multiplexes for miles.

More than half of the approximately 600 drive-in theater screens in the country have converted so far, according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association.

Scrabble Ventures LLC has begun leasing digital projectors to small theaters that can’t afford a lump-sum payment. Chief Executive Ranjit Thakur said the company has converted 370 theaters so far with more than 400 scheduled over the next three months.

Kickstarter, the Colorado State program, Kiwanis International club, state department funding and local donations are ways that some of that other cinemas have managed to raise funds.

Business

USA (CA): As we highlighted in our item on ArcLight coming to Santa Monica, existing cinemas there will have to shrink to compete. Hence Laemmle’s 4 screen will ‘expand and contract’.

The Second Street cinema currently has four screens and about 1,100 seats but a proposed makeover would add two screens and drop the seat total to below 500, said Laemmle CEO Greg Laemmle.

The largest theater would hold about 150, which is about the capacity of the current smallest theater. Two mezzanine-level theaters would seat about 35, Laemmle said.

“The row spacing is better and we believe the sight lines will also be better,” Laemmle said. “The added screens provide flexibility to show more movies for longer.” LINK

AMC has found an interesting way to promote both the opening of a new theatre and, at the same time, its loyalty rewards program. In advance of opening the newly renovated AMC Fallbrook 7 complex, the cinema chain has invited members of its AMC Stubs program to attend an evening of free screenings at the theatre this Friday, September 27th.
First, a little history on the re-opening of the Fallbrook 7.

AMC took over the theatre at the Fallbrook Center in West Hills, CA earlier this year when Laemmle Theaters abandoned the site after deadlocking on a new lease agreement with the mall’s owner, Chicago-based General Growth Properties. When Laemmle originally made public the closing of the Fallbrook 7, which is a few miles from my home, I suspected the property owner may have been hoping to attract an exhibitor with deeper pockets. Sure enough, within two weeks of Laemmle’s announcement, AMC Theatres swooped in and took over the lease.

Moviegoers who patronized the Fallbrook 7 regularly, many of them senior citizens, were disheartened to hear of Laemmle’s plans, since it was one of the only cinemas in the west San Fernando Valley to play arthouse titles. An older theatre, it was also known for sometimes scratchy projection and sloped floors. Upon announcing their intention to take over the multiplex, AMC tried to assuage any fears longtime customers might have as evidenced by Mark McDonald, the circuit’s executive vice president of development, telling the Los Angeles Times:

The opening of the first Sundance Cinemas in Los Angeles seems a perfect way to bring summer to a close. The new theatre opened in the space once occupied by the Sunset 5 which Laemmle Theatres operated for two decades before it was shuttered last December. The new venue has been named Sundance Sunset Cinema and, much like the Sunset 5 before it, will feature mostly independent and art house titles. It opened on August 31st.

Sundance Sunset Cinema is the fifth location to be opened by Sundance Cinemas, which operates theatres in Houston, TX, Madison, WI, San Francisco, CA and Seattle, WA. A sixth location in Westchester, NY is planned for later this year. The circuit is part of the Sundance Group, the corporate entity that houses all of multi-hyphenate Robert Redford’s Sundance related businesses, including the annual festival. The actor/director, who grew up in Los Angeles, recently told KCRW radio host Warren Olney on “Which Way LA“, that the opening of Sundance Sunset Cinema is a bit of a homecoming for him.

“…I feel that it’s a chance to bring back something that I truly loved as a kid,” said Redford. “….you bring it back in a way that you experienced films when you were young. You didn’t see six trailers in a film blasting your ears away.”

Expanding Sundance Cinemas has been a longtime goal of Redford who has always thought the 10-day film festival he holds every January in Park City, Utah could easily expand throughout the entire country if there were theatres to show independent films. In the mid-1990s, as the Sundance Film Festival grew ever larger, Redford said, “…it didn’t seem to have that opportunity because there was still a lock by the major studios and the theater owners. There was not enough space or a place for independent films at that time. So the decision was to go electronically and so we started the Sundance Channel, but in my head the better preference was always going to be could we do a live experience.”